Dead Can Dance

While I enjoy this band, it seems that they're a lot like Slayer: a couple of epic tunes kick off and end each album, and in the middle, it's a valise of odds and ends wrapped into tunes. Yet it always seems like there should be more coherence to it all.

I agree with for the most part; at least this is true of 'the Serpents's egg" and the albums to follow. "Within the realm of a dying sun" i feel is their most coherent album. The fact that it is split up into two halves makes the album a lot more. The second easily outshines the first, but it gets progressiley better as it goes on.

I think the two main musicians behind DCD write the music individually. This is what I understood from reading the booklet of "Wake", a compilation. Perhaps that's why it does not always sound homogeneous.

That explains why the compilation A Passage in Time, save the minor aesthetic differences, seems just as "written" as any of their true albums. It also makes sense as to why the self-titled album was neglected in putting it together.

I see this band, at least during the most productive years, as being essentially an attempt to recapture the ideal of the medieval performance troupe. The emphasis of the band was always on performance and repertoire, rather than longer, thematic works. Songs, not albums, like all folk music.